Later text
Acts 12:23BSB
Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Acts 12:23BSB
Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Earlier text
And that very night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies!
Earlier text
Isaiah 51:8BSB
For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool. But My righteousness will last forever, My salvation through all generations.”
"Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died" (Acts 12:23). The stroke of the angel of the Lord recalls the great judgments of Israel's history, above all the night when "the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians" (2 Kings 19:35) — the proud besieging power felled in a moment by heaven. Herod, like Sennacherib, sets himself against God and His people and is cut down by the same angelic hand. The connection is analogical: God's swift, sovereign judgment on the arrogant oppressor is a constant of Scripture (cf. Isaiah 51:8). Luke's point is doxological and reassuring — the church's persecutor dies while the word of God continues to spread and multiply (Acts 12:24); the God who judged Assyria still guards His people and His gospel.